Socio-economic Assessment of the Philippine Agrarian Reform

This paper, using qualitative research methods, aims to assess the challenges faced by the Philippine Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program and its extension on the selected cases from five Philippine provinces. In 27 years of its implementation, the agrarian reform has achieved land redistribution of around 7.7 million hectares despite the periodical lack of political will and opposition from landlords, sometimes violent or through protracted legal battles. Support services focus almost exclusively on Agrarian Reform Communities, in which such services are funded mostly through the official development assistance from abroad rather than government’s budget. Limited availability of support services to those agrarian reform beneficiaries located outside of Agrarian Reform Communities prevents them from becoming economically viable producers and seriously taints whatever land distribution may have accomplished. Some reform beneficiaries may have been awarded their land on paper but were not able to take possession of the land or must have abdicated control of it.